Bernard Widrow – författare

This book takes the notions of adaptivity and learning from the realm of engineering into the realm of biology and natural processes. It introduces a Hebbian-LMS algorithm, an integration of unsupervised Hebbian learning and supervised LMS learning in neural networks, as a mathematical representation of a general theory for synaptic learning in the brain, and adaptation and functional control of homeostasis in living systems. Written in a language that is able to address students and scientists with different backgrounds, this book accompanies readers on a unique journey through various homeostatic processes in living organisms, such as body temperature control and synaptic plasticity, explaining how the Hebbian-LMS algorithm can help understand them, and suggesting some open questions for future research. It also analyses cell signalling pathways from an unusual perspective, where hormones and hormone receptors are shown to be regulated via the principles of the Hebbian-LMS algorithm. It further discusses addiction and pain, and various kinds of mood disorders alike, showing how they can be modelled with the Hebbian-LMS algorithm.  For the first time, the Hebbian-LMS algorithm, which has been derived from a combination of Hebbian theory from the neuroscience field and the LMS algorithm from the engineering field of adaptive signal processing, becomes a potent model for understanding how biological regulation works. Thus, this book is breaking new ground in neuroscience by providing scientists with a general theory for how nature does control synaptic learning. It then goes beyond that, showing that the same principles apply to hormone-mediated regulation of physiological processes. In turn, the book tackles in more depth the concept of learning. It covers computer simulations and strategies for training neural networks with the Hebbian-LMS algorithm, demonstrating that the resulting algorithms are able to identify relationships between unknown input patterns. It shows how this can translate in useful ideas to understand human memory and design cognitive structures. All in all, this book offers an absolutely, unique, inspiring reading for biologists, physiologists, and engineers, paving the way for future studies on what we could call the nature’s secret learning algorithm.

How does human memory work?  How does human pattern recognition work?  The book’s motivation is twofold, to add to knowledge in the field of neuroscience, and to design a highly simplified cognitive memory constructed using software and existing electronic components.  Readers are taken on an inspiring journey through the fundamentals of human memory, how it is constructed, and how it works in everyday life.  The book goes more in-depth into the human side of cognitive memory — how seeing, hearing, walking and speaking works.  Impairments in cognitive memory are also discussed.  Lastly, the book sheds light on how meaning is extracted from sensory inputs and from stored data. This book is not without controversy.  Neuroscientists accept the engrams (or memory traces) model that long-term memory is stored in the brain’s neural networks. The authors believe that long-term human memory is stored digitally, in the DNA of brain cells, and not in analog neural networks.  Further, the authors believe that innate knowledge of humans and animals is inherited, transmitted from parents to offspring at the moment of conception.  The single cell contains the innate knowledge in the DNA of its nucleus.   Memory is stored in DNA.  The brain’s neural networks are for access and retrieval of memory and not for actual storage.  This book offers a unique, inspiring reading to researchers and other readers interested in the science of memory.